The Associated Press checks out some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. This one is bogus, even though it was shared widely on social media. Here are the facts:
CLAIM: A video shows a woman filling a white plastic bag with gas at a Kroger station due to gas shortages in the Southeastern U.S.
THE FACTS: Social media users are sharing an old video of a woman filling a plastic bag with gasoline to falsely claim it shows someone panic-buying gasoline this week. Thousands of gas stations in the Southeastern U.S. were running out of fuel due to distribution problems and panic-buying following a cyberattack on the Colonial Pipeline.
One Twitter upload of the video, which shows a woman trying to tie a plastic bag sloshing with gasoline, received nearly 2 million views on Wednesday with the hashtag #gasshortage. “I just wanna know why..... why the bags and not a gas tank? This is dangerous #GasShortage,” stated a Facebook post sharing the video on Tuesday.
But the video clip has nothing to do with current events — it first surfaced online in 2019. The video was taken at a Kroger supermarket service station in Houston.
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission addressed the issue on Wednesday in a Twitter thread. “Do not fill plastic bags with gasoline,” the agency tweeted. “Use only containers approved for fuel.” Colonial Pipeline, which is biggest in the U.S., was shut down on May 7 after a ransomware attack. Colonial on Thursday reported that the pipeline’s operations had restarted and gasoline deliveries were being made in all of its markets, though the company said it would take “several days” for things to return to normal.
Fuel disruptions did not cause NASCAR to postpone race
CLAIM: Gas shortages resulting from the Colonial Pipeline cyberattack led NASCAR to postpone a race in Dover, Delaware.
THE FACTS: NASCAR did not postpone Sunday’s race. A false post shared on Facebook and Twitter pushed the baseless claim that disruptions after a hack of the nation’s largest fuel pipeline had forced NASCAR to postpone the Drydene 400 NASCAR Cup Series race at Delaware’s Dover International Speedway.
The post featured an image of an alleged tweet from an account impersonating the name of Fox Sports reporter Bob Pockrass. “Due to the Colonial Pipeline issue causing a fuel shortage on the east coast, Nascar has decided to postpone this weekends Dover race to a later date,” the tweet read. “More information to come out later today, stay tuned.”
NASCAR told the AP in an emailed statement that the post was false. “NASCAR has confirmed that there will be no impact to its racing operations at Dover this weekend due to fuel shortages across the Southeast,” the statement read.
Pockrass also addressed the fake tweet on his real Twitter account, saying, “The Dover race is on this weekend.” A Twitter account with a username matching the one in the post has been suspended from the platform.
Old photos fuel misinformation around gas shortages
CLAIM: Photos show Americans filling their cars with plastic bags of gasoline and lining up at gas stations with red gas cans in recent days.
THE FACTS: Social media users are misrepresenting old photos to falsely suggest they show Americans stockpiling gasoline this week after a hack of the Colonial Pipeline led to distribution problems and panic-buying that resulted in thousands of gas stations running out of fuel.
One falsely captioned photo shows a car trunk packed with gasoline in clear plastic bags. “Plastic bags filled with gas by morons in South Carolina,” a tweet sharing the photo said.
In fact, the photo was taken in 2019 in Mexico. Reports at the time said police had arrested two people transporting gasoline illegally in Huauchinango, Mexico.
Social media users also shared years-old photos of people standing in line with red gas cans along with claims that they were taken recently. One photo viewed hundreds of thousands of times on Facebook was taken in Seaford, New York, in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Another was taken in Miami in preparation for Hurricane Irma in 2017.
— Beatrice Dupuy and Ali Swenson
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